Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) chastised fellow Democrat Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) for making “reprehensible and repulsive” remarks after Hamas attacked Israel on Saturday.
Torres charged Tlaib, the lone Palestinian American in the House, with misrepresenting the invasion as “resistance.” And he criticized Tlaib and Missouri Democrat Cori Bush for ostensibly pleading with Washington to stop funding Israel.
Tlaib and Bush were joined in their anguish at the cycle of violence in the region by representatives Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). Bowman also voiced his disapproval of the closure of Gaza, but Tlaib and Bush’s appeals for the United States to refrain from its customary support of Israel touched a nerve.
“U.S. aid to Israel is and should be unconditional, and never more so than in this moment of critical need,” Torres added in a statement. “Congress must act decisively to provide Israel with whatever it needs to defend itself in the face of unprecedented terrorism.”
“Shame on anyone who glorifies as ‘resistance’ the largest single-day mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust,” Torres added. “It is reprehensible and repulsive.”
The most recent conflict in the area started when Hamas fighters launched an unexpected attack on Israel, killing 700 Israelis while also apparently abducting dozens of civilians and taking them back to Gaza. According to the UN, more than 100,000 Palestinians have been displaced and more than 400 have died as a result of the Israeli response in Gaza.
“I grieve the Palestinian and Israeli lives lost yesterday, today, and every day,” Tlaib said in a statement earlier. “I am determined as ever to fight for a just future where everyone can live in peace, without fear and with true freedom, equal rights, and human dignity.
The path to that future must include lifting the blockade, ending the occupation, and dismantling the apartheid system that creates the suffocating, dehumanizing conditions that can lead to resistance. … As long as our country provides billions in unconditional funding to support the apartheid government, this heartbreaking cycle of violence will continue.”
Torres’ response, as recounted by Capitol Hill reporter Marc Rod, was also directed at Bush, who demanded an end to “U.S. government support for Israeli military occupation and apartheid.”
Another member of the so-called “Squad” of progressive House lawmakers who have criticized Israel’s treatment of Palestinians spoke in a more restrained manner: Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).
“I condemn the horrific acts we are seeing unfold today in Israel against children, women, the elderly, and the unarmed people who are being slaughtered and taken hostage by Hamas,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Such senseless violence will only repeat the back and forth cycle we’ve seen, which we cannot allow to continue. We need to call for deescalation and ceasefire. I will keep advocating for peace and justice throughout the Middle East.”
Regardless of what Congress does, it will be constrained by a House of Representatives that does not now have a permanent speaker. A group of dissident Republicans helped remove Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) from his position last week.
